Texas' Rationale for Requiring Face-to-Face Courses for CPA

[sanantone]

I'm not persuaded.

Thank you for your email concerning the Board’s rule on the 15 semester hours of upper level accounting required in a traditional classroom format.  It has been the Board’s position that a great deal of learning occurs during spontaneous classroom discussions.  Additionally, learning continues to occur after class has ended as students and instructors look deeper into the topics that were discussed which may even carryover into the next class meeting after the students and instructor have done further research.    The Board periodically considers the acceptability of accounting courses in a distance learning format.  While it recognizes the online format, it is the Board’s opinion that there is added value in the traditional classroom accounting courses that may not be present in distance learning courses.  Many Board members who were also university accounting instructors presented information and made valid arguments that some accounting courses were better suited to be offered in a traditional classroom format, than other courses, due to the material and learning objectives.  However, the Board did not construct the rule in such a way as to identify the courses that could be taken in a distance learning format.  This was left to each university. The research that has been done indicates that students who take all online courses don’t fare as well on the CPA exam as students in traditional classrooms.

[dfrecore]

Interesting. And, colleges love to tout their pass rates for things like NCLEX and CPA - so if their data is that butt-in-seat produces higher pass rates than online, that's what they're going to go with.

[sanantone]

Interesting.  And, colleges love to tout their pass rates for things like NCLEX and CPA - so if their data is that butt-in-seat produces higher pass rates than online, that's what they're going to go with.

If I have time, I'll try to look for the research. It would have to control for the quality of the student to have any real meaning.

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I found an article on a study that did control for the quality of the student.

Programmatic-level comparisons are made between the certified public accountant (CPA) exam outcomes of two types of accounting programs: online or distance accounting programs and face-to-face or classroom accounting programs. After matching programs from each group on student selectivity at admission, the two types of programs are compared on CPA exam outcomes of graduates. Results show online or distance accounting programs have much lower average CPA pass rates than their matched face-to-face counterparts with equivalent student selection criteria. In addition, average 6-year graduation rates and average propensity to sit for the CPA exam after graduation are much lower in the online or distance accounting programs.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...15.1087371